I am awake early to watch the sun spread its rippling sheet of gold across the surface of the Galilean lake. Palm fronds stir in the morning breeze along the edge of this subtropical inland sea. A few fishing boats are pulling into the harbor of Tiberias after a night of toil in the deep.
To the south the Greek cities of the Decapolis once stood in their splendor, now crumbling heaps of stone. To these the Saviour, when He was here, brought the news of Heaven’s matchless love. Don’t be surprised to meet some of their former inhabitants in glory.
Across on the eastern side, now called the Golan Heights, are the lands of Gergasa and Gadara, where the Lord worked miracles and saw a few lost sheep come to the arms of the Shepherd. Among them was a demoniac who was liberated from the chains that bound his soul only to be bound by love to his Master. How like the woman from across the lake to the northwest, Mary of Magdala, who being delivered from seven demons, followed her Lord right to His grave–and then on to glory.
Today the west, east, and southern shores bustle with activity. But the northern shore, running at an angle from the plains of Gennessaret to the Golan, is strangely silent. During our Saviour’s earthly sojourn it was the location of three key cities: Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin. You can visit their ruins as we do today–at least we will see two out of three.
Capernaum is the best known of the three, and rightly so, for here the Lord Jesus lived for three-and-a-half years, administering the blessing of Heaven upon its citizenry. Here He healed Peter’s mother-in-law, the centurion’s servant, the nobleman’s son, the man with the withered hand, and many more. Here He commissioned Peter to catch one fish down at the harbor after Peter had answered rashly that, of course, his Master paid temple tax. The fish he caught that day was worth enough to not only pay the Lord’s tax but Peter’s as well.
The blessing of those days of Heaven on earth spilled over to the nearby towns of Bethsaida (hometown of the Lord’s first disciples, Peter and Andrew, James and John) and Chorazin. This tri-city area became the hub of the Lord’s dealings in “Galilee of the Gentiles.” These highly-favored inhabitants heard the spoken Word coming from the living Word. They saw the visible glory of the invisible God. They tasted bread provided by the Bread from heaven. They, like the woman with the issue of blood at Capernaum, touched the Great High Priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmity. Yet for it all they, by and large, did not receive the One who had come to seek and save the lost. At last, He had to say: “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes…And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell…” (Mt. 11:21-23). The place of untold blessing had fallen under the divine curse.
To the north of these cities, at the foot of mighty Mount Hermon, lies the ancient city of Laish, renamed Dan by the tribe of Dan when they chose this site (furthest from Jerusalem) instead of the land the Lord gave them near Joppa. They had been the first to institutionalize idolatry in Israel and this great rock face at present-day Banias, from which issues one of the main sources of the Jordan, was dedicated to idol worship. Here one of the golden calves was located in the days of King Jeroboam, the people-pleaser. You can still see the niches in the rock that were used to house images. If ever there was a place under the curse of God, surely this would be it.
How symbolic, then, and how spiritually invigorating, that the Lord chose this as the backdrop for His earth-shaking announcement: “Upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt. 16:18). To the place of the cursed devil-worshippers came this magnificent revelation that God also has a Rock–the unshakeable Christ. Upon this foundation would be erected the only structure that will survive the collapse of the universe. Indeed this whole world under the curse received in this announcement the hope of a blessing so wonderful that only God would have conceived it, so expensive that only God could afford it.
Then the sacred writer adds, “From that time forth began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that He must…suffer…and be killed.” Ah, the true place of the curse and the blessing: “Christ…made a curse for us:…Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ” (Gal. 3:13-14).